(The following is a transcript of a homily by Father George Sanders, Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church, Hot Springs, AR – March 13, 2022. Father George formerly lived overseas and is entered the fellowship of the Catholic Church later in life and has a Protestant background like me. He is married with children. Many don’t know that there are Catholic priests who are married with kids. He’s been a good friend. Shawna and I went to his church on our 27th wedding anniversary. I went before mass to confess my sins as a husband and we both went forward to receive a blessing from him for our marriage after his homily. I recorded the blessing and homily and hand it transcribed since it was so meaningful to me.)
Old Testament Reading (preceded the homily)
And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…(Genesis 15:5-18 ESV)
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Homily
As we come today, I want to talk just briefly about the reading of the Old Testament and give you a little bit of background that may help us to understand the significance of what occurred in this passage. And after that, I have an invitation for some of you today. So let’s get to the first part. So today in the Old Testament, we see this story of Abram that says in the very beginning that God had already spoken to him and said that Abram already believed God. God said, “Look at the sky, Abraham,” or Abram at that point. “Look at sky Abram, see all the stars? Count them if you can. So shall your descendants be, I promise you that.” And it says there, Abram believed God. It was accounted to him for righteousness. So Abram already believed God that he was going to be the father of many nations.
Yet we go a little further in the scripture, and then God says one more thing to him, says, “Abram, you shall possess the land. Your descendants shall possess the land from Egypt, all the way to the great river Euphrates. I am giving this land to you and to your posterity forever.” And so then he said, “But Lord, how can I know that I will inherit the land?” So God showed him. And if we understand what happened there, we can understand a lot more about how all of a sudden he knew, because he knew, because he knew this promise would be fulfilled in his life. Because see God told him to do something. He told him to go get some sacrifices. He told him to get a heifer and a she-goat and a ram, and a turtle dove and pigeons, bring them to this field.
So what happened was he’s fixing to perform a covenant ritual. This is the ritual that is performed in the near east. The one that God gave to the children of Israel with Moses is called a ‘suzerain-vassal’. We have some educators here, you look it up on Google suzerain is S-U-Z-E-R-A-I-N. Suzerain-vassal is a contract or a covenant-type arrangement that’s been around for a long, long, long time. In fact, we were talking, just today in our coffee chat, that China and Taiwan originally were under this suzerain-vassal type of agreement. So what it is, is there is a person who is the king, the suzerain, the sovereign. And another kingdom comes close and they decide to enter into covenant. So here’s one thing about covenant. It’s not a contract. We all know what a contract is, right? And as you know, the last paragraph is the contract is what? The liquidated damages.
It says, someone breaks this covenant, here’s how you get out of it. So all of our contracts that we write have an out clause at the bottom, right? If we decide to repudiate this contract, here’s how much I owe you or here’s what we’ve got to do if we break this contract. So contracts are meant to have an exit, an out-clause. Covenants on other hand are not like that. Covenants don’t have an end. Covenants are when groups of people come together and pledge their lives to each other for as long as they shall live. You see when covenants happen, this kingdom and this kingdom come together, they join together as family, they form this bond and from that their children and their children’s children begin to intermarry. And in the few generations, guess what? We are not “him and them”. We are “them”. We’re all together.
We’re one. Now my brothers and sisters…try and undo that! That’s why marriage is a covenant. It’s not a contract. It’s not something that if it doesn’t work out for me, I’ll get myself out of this thing. That’s why marriage is a covenant. Some things, my brothers and sisters, are just too big for a contract. Some things are too weighty and too meaningful for a contract. So here we have this suzerain covenant that Abraham’s about to make. So here’s the way this thing works. Generally, there were two groups of people. There were the suzerain and the vassal, and on the one side, the king and all of his people. It was in the day when the king, when he spoke, he spoke for all of them. That kingdom was resident within him, just like the father of the home. When he spoke, they were all committed to whatever he had had given them.
So the king stands as the father of this group. And the vassal stands as the father of this group. In between them, there’s this big ox. They split him open from the top, all the way down. Cut him all the way down, and lay the parts open. So they’re exposed there on the ground. So what will happen is the suzerain then will then process from his people through the center of that sacrifice. And when he gets to the center sacrifice, he says, “Oh God, be it unto me and more,” looking at the animal, “if I break this covenant.” You get it? Be it unto me. May I be split from my head to my feet. May I be laid out on the ground, may my entrails spill up on the ground if I break this covenant. And so he will say that and run through the covenant.
He’ll go around it through the sacrifice and end up back over here. And now he’s on the other side. The vassal will do the very same thing, in the middle. “Be it so to me and more if I break this covenant,” and then he makes his way around and ends over here. Now, the king is here and the vassal is here, and now their people are joined together, but it’s not over yet. You know what the last part of every covenant is? One of the most important parts, it’s not only symbolic, it’s actual. There’s always a covenant meal. Maybe that doesn’t surprise you. There’s always a covenant meal. And so what happens is the sacrifice that’s here, this offering, this pledge, this vow is made before God. So God is called into account. Witnesses today, “God, be unto me and more so.”
And so the sacrifice is now shared with God and the people, so the sacrifice, the pieces that are given to God are taken to the altar and are made to holocaust, they’re burnt and sent up to God. God takes in the aroma of the sacrifices. He partakes in the sacrifice and then the people, all of them, what’s left over, they cook and then they eat together so that each person there in that covenant partakes of the very same sacrifice, that one that was partaken of by God. That vow that they have made as they partake of the sacrifice. They become one.
The ancient covenants understand that whatever problem you had before this occurred is null and void. There are no more problems. There are no more grudges. There are no more things that someone needs to do for me. At the point of that covenant, they have communion. They become one whole people because they all eat of that same sacrifice that God has also partaken of. They become one by eating from the same sacrifice. And this thing is called “covenant”. This thing is called “communion”. It probably reminds you of something, I hope. We shall celebrate the covenant here today, and that’s why everybody can’t come here. Everybody cannot receive holy communion. And why is that? Only those that are able to make the covenant eat the covenant meal. No one shows up at this celebration and just eats the meal.
That’s not what it’s about. It’s the joining of hearts and minds together, a full joining. A giving of yourself, completely, not a little bit like, “Here, I give you that much.” It’s a whole giving of yourself to one another like in marriage. And so until a person is willing to do that, they could not partake in the sacrifice, right? The sacrifice is the sacrament of unity, because we all partake of the one bread, of the one chalice. By us all taking within us that very same sacrifice, we become one. And so only those that are willing to say, “I want to become one in heart, mind, soul and strength. I am a memberof the Catholic Church. I hold to all the Catholic church teaches and professes. I will live my life in accordance with the morality of the Catholic church. I want to join myself to the church.” Because our faith is not just one directional.
It’s not me and God. It’s with the Church. We make communion not just with God. He came that we might have communion unity with one another. So what do we call this holy sacrifice. What’s the name we give it? This is a trivia for you. We call it the “mass”, right? We call it the “Eucharist”. The most proper name is the Eucharist. It comes from the Greek word, Eucharistia, which actually means “the great thanksgiving.” It is the great thanksgiving to God for the covenant. It is the celebration of the covenant, so we call it the Eucharist, but our word is “mass”. Where does that come from? What does “mass” mean? Anybody know? It’s the last words that the priest used to say in the Latin mass, “ita misa est”. “Go, you’re sent forth”. “Misa” means sent forth. This is the time we come together to make covenant with God, to prepare ourselves, to be sent forth in mission to the world, to bring the good news of God to our world today. “Ita misa est”, the last words we’ll say over here, go forth and serve our Lord in his vineyard. So that’s where we get the word mass. We also use the word communion, right? Holy communion. Most of our non-Catholic, our Protestant brothers, use this word to talk about what happens at the table. They call it “communion”. Is that a Catholic word?
It is a Catholic word. Some of you have had what? First communion. It is a Catholic word. The Greek is “koinonia”, and it actually means “a partaking together”. It’s that partaking of the same sacrifice. That’s what the word communion actually means. And we also call it the “Lord’s Supper”. Do we call it that? Outside the Catholic church that’s normal, but it’s also the word that we use because Paul called it the Lord supper, the supper of the Lord. And so as Abraham wondered, how God will I know that I will possess this land? You know why he knew? Because God made covenant with him. God made a pledge. A promise. By giving himself to Abraham, He said, “look at me, I’m making covenant”. He spoke to him in his own language. He knew this suzerain-vassal covenant-type arrangement. He spoke to him in his culture. He said, I’m cutting covenant with you today, Abraham.
When Abraham saw that fiery pot, and that torch, going through the sacrifices, God promised, “I will bring you into this land.” And from that point it was settled. Abraham knew God had made covenant and God would never forsake his covenant. So how do we know that we too will one day inherit the land? The same reason, because God himself has made covenant with us. Every time we come to this holy altar, we are coming to the sacrifice of the holy mass. You see, Abraham did not go through the sacrifice. Who went through the sacrifice? God alone. God alone, unilaterally made covenant with Abraham, but there would be someone who would make covenant for us. And who would that be? That’d be our Lord himself who walked through the sacrifice, who himself was a sacrifice on the altar of the cross. He made sacrifice for us.
He became our salvation. He brought us into the covenant meal and became the meal itself. It is through participation in that meal that we say, “I am a member of God’s covenant people, and I promise to God and to my neighbor, to live my faith with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I covenant myself with you, with us.” We become a covenant family as we come to this holy meal. This is what God is promised to us. And so today we will experience the beauty of the covenant. Those of us who are prepared, those of us who are ready, those of us that are saying, “I am in full fellowship with the Catholic Church and I will serve God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Want to make covenant with God? We will come today and receive of that great covenant.